Saturday, 17 March 2012

Next!

It's gone. Now I have that constant niggling feeling that I have sent the wrong version, or, as I dreamt last night, I sent the first 5000 words of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' convinced that they wouldn't recognise the story or characters Titania and Bottom - common as they are - and award me first prize!

I really MUST stop thinking about it now, it's done!

So....next?

Next I am working on the children's book I had started just before this competition was announced and couldn't use as my entry as the only genre not accepted was children's fiction. Thanks to the competition though I have a far clearer plan of how to go about writing a novel. I am a novice noveller so any pointers in the right direction are more than welcome. I'm sure that every writer, published or unpublished, has their own way of working but for me it was really useful to have the deadline to work to and made me really get my head down and plot out the story properly before going on to write anything. Obviously as I went along there were changes to the synopsis as the characters took on lives of their own but to have an overview was completely new - before I have always dived straight in to the narrative - which can work too - but not as well....for me.

I have also taken another look at a sitcom I was working on previously. It's funny! Sometimes when you go back to things you've written you cringe, I have plenty of things I've written that have that effect on me anyway! But I genuinely think this one has legs - so to speak. Soooo, I'm going to have a crack at trying to get this further developed. I know it's not easy, not even for well-known writers to get projects off the ground but if you don't try then you certainly won't get anywhere. With this in mind I'm going to re-write and tighten it up.

Apart from the BBC Writersroom there are few and far between production companies who will even read your emails let alone your scripts so it's tricky and a bit irritating to have that door not even ajar before they shut it in your face, however I would rather have my toe stuck in it trying than to have never knocked on the door in the first place.

I've entered another short story competition too and also a poetry competition. I feel that if I just keep sending stuff out there that something may come of it - who knows?

Obviously, I still have to actually go to work every day and I still have half pint at home every afternoon so time is not my best friend at the moment. However, when September arrives I will have afternoons to myself as the human dynamo starts full-time school.

Considering the amount of time I do spend writing (every spare minute) I haven't earned one single penny from it, which proves to me that I have found the job I want - finally! Who knows, this year....this 'Brilliant Year' could just be my time and like Mark Twain said 'Just write without pay until someone offers you pay'.